Foggy Morning Walk

This is a 5”x7” plein air oil painting on canvas panel. I grew up on the Central Coast of California where morning fog/the marine layer provides a gentle start to the day giving us a few extra hours of cozy sweater weather before burning off around noon to a hot afternoon. A morning walk on the local hiking trails is filled with the scent of black licorice from the sweet anise plants. On the misty morning that I painted this, these scraggly dead trees along the path caught my eye. Their sharp, dry broken branches stood in stark contrast to the soft edges of the fog-draped landscape surrounding them.